I got out of bed and took trail mix to go for a quick breakfast. J wanted to stay in this morning. I left by myself in the Jeep at 6:25.

There were lots of nice puffy clouds and some color. :)

I went to the White Tank Campground to investigate the arch near there, and it's definitely an afternoon shoot. I headed out among boulders to look for other compositions. I found one nice composition that would take advantage of some clouds that were moving into the frame, so I set up and waited. I waited, and waited some more. Then I noticed that the cloud front was dissipating before it moved into the frame. :( I moved on to look for other compositions. I found a nice cactus and old bush trunk to use for a foreground, and fortunately there was a cloud in a good position (left).

I returned to the RV at 8:50 and our neighbor's diesel pickup truck was idling. J said it had been idling for a long time. I had my normal breakfast while downloading the images I took this morning. Then I downselected them in Capture One (C1). A ranger came by around 9:55 and told our neighbors that they couldn't idle their diesel like they were doing. Our noisy neighbors left, and we finally had some peace and quiet! :)

I left around 10:15 in the Jeep by myself to look for another campsite because it was too noisy right on the main road through the campground.

Then I went out to the junction with the north-south road through the park to go online using a Verizon Wireless National Access signal. I didn't have to do much online, so the slower signal would be OK.

I returned to the campground around 11:00 and registered for Site 44. On my way back after paying, I stopped to photograph a California ground squirrel from the car. As I was getting set up, our friends B&A pulled up, and I directed them to our campsite. The ground squirrel wasn't quite looking the right way, so I waited. The next thing I knew, our friends G&L-N and G&L-O pulled up next to me in G&L-N's truck. They set up to photograph the ground squirrel too, and then the squirrel disappeared down among the boulders before I was able to get anything good. Because our picnic was fast approaching and our guests were starting to arrive, I headed over to the RV to help get things ready.

B&J and S arrived for the picnic. After all of the food and drinks were on the table, we commenced eating. It was fun to roll our own wraps and the food was delicious. After everyone finished, we brought out the desert. The Betty-Crocker chocolate brownies with chocolate icing that J baked were to die for! Some of our friends photographed the landscape and wildlife around our campsite, and others just sat around and visited. A good time was had by all. The picnic wound down around 2:30, and our guests headed to Hidden Valley while we moved the RV to Site 44. Then we left in the Jeep.

We went to the Hidden Valley Picnic Area and set up to photograph the California ground squirrel that was resting on a boulder near a picnic table. As we were photographing it (below right), a whitetail antelope squirrel came out too (below left). A Merriam chipmunk came out too, but I didn't get any great shots of it. Our friends came by after they had finished photographing the wonderful rocks to tell us where to find a blooming yucca and a pool of water. We said goodbye to G&L-N who will be heading back north tomorrow morning, then we got out our landscape gear and went in search of ... landscapes. We photographed a nice backlit yucca bloom, then we split up. I kept going around the back of the cluster of boulders and saw lots of interesting rocks, but no compositions jumped out at me. I kept going and going thinking that I could circle around the cluster of boulders, but at 5:20 I turned back. I returned to the Jeep around 5:50, and J was just putting her gear away — perfect timing.


Shortly after we left the parking area, the clouds to the west started to light up. It was a pleasant surprise because the sun had set around 5:35 and the clouds didn't get very much color when it did. We quickly found some interesting Joshua trees and set up to photograph them with the fading color. The image to the left was made from two captures: one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the foreground (but intentionally still on the dark side), and then they were combined in Photoshop.

We returned to the RV around 6:45, and I leveled the RV. We had dinner of wraps and leftover baked beans for me, and a chef salad for J.

I downloaded the images I took this afternoon, then downselected them in iView. I did a quick downselect in Capture One (C1) to select images for the blog.